The present disclosure relates generally to the formation and use of dendritic structures. A dendritic structure is a structure that develops with a typical multi-branching, tree-like form. Dendritic patterns are very common in nature and are illustrated by diverse phenomena such as snowflake formation and lightning. Dendritic crystallization forms a natural fractal pattern. A fractal is generally defined as a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided into parts, each of which is (at least stochastically) a reduced-size copy of the whole, a property called self-similarity. This self-similarity leads to a fine structure at arbitrarily small scales. Because they appear similar (but not identical) at all levels of magnification, fractals are often considered to be infinitely complex. In practice, however, the finest observable levels of structure will be limited by physical and/or chemical constraints.